Author: Ron Clutz

Electric Car Obsession

Posted on by Ron Clutz

 

Times Square Billboard

World Economic Forum Urges Public To Eliminate Ownership Of Private Vehicles

The World Economic Forum is advocating for the abolition of “wasteful” private vehicle ownership for the planet’s greater good as the organization attempts to advance its “Great Reset” agenda and transform the world so that the average person will “own nothing.”

“We need a clean energy revolution, and we need it now,” states a WEF’s July 18 article titled, “3 circular economy approaches to reduce demand for critical metals.”

“But this transition from fossil fuels to renewables will need large supplies of critical metals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, to name a few. Shortages of these critical minerals could raise the costs of clean energy technologies,” the forum continues.

The unelected globalist group recommends the public “go from owning to using” by implementing “vehicle sharing initiatives” to decrease mass reliance on critical metals.

“The average car or van in England is driven just 4% of the time. While most already have a personal phone, 39% of workers globally have employer-provided laptops and mobile phones. This is not at all resource efficient,” the WEF states. “More sharing can reduce ownership of idle equipment and thus material usage.”

The WEF recommends the public abandon use of the vehicles they own and instead opt to share a ride by “car sharing and links to an article published by Tree Hugger to that details what “car sharing” entails.

Banning private ownership in its entirety is essential, according to the WEF.

“A design process that focuses on fulfilling the underlying need instead of designing for product purchasing is fundamental to this transition,” the WEF continues. “This is the mindset needed to redesign cities to reduce private vehicles and other usages.”

Earlier this month, the WEF also published a position paper claiming gas prices must increase to save democracy.

Policies must be implemented to increase the prices of alternatives to green energy, the WEF argues in the July 11 article.

See Also The Illusion of Eco Cars

If That Tesla Battery Could Talk

 

Surplus Arctic Ice July 2022

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The animation shows Arctic ice extents on day 212 (end of July) starting with 2007, and showing the lack of decline through yesterday.  Years vary as to which regions retain more or less ice.  For example, some years the Russian shelf seas (left side) are mostly open water on day 212.  Kara and Barents seas (top side) fluctuate.  The Northwest passage (bottom), melts early some years in Beaufort Sea, and CAA, but this year not so much. The graph below compares the July monthly ice extents 2007 to 2022 and compared to the SII 16 year average.

Clearly July ice appears as a plateau, and most years MASIE shows greater extents than SII, with differences of only a few 100k km2.  The previous three years were in deficit to average, but July 2022 has returned to surplus years like 2018.  More on MASIE dataset at the end.

The graph shows the melting pattern during July 2022 remained above average all month, and greatly exceeded 2007 and 2020, especially in the last 2 weeks.  July 31, 2022 was 275k km2 in surplus, and exceeded 2020 by 1.2 Wadhams (M km2).

The table below shows ice extents by regions comparing 2022 with 16-year average (2007 to 2022 inclusive) and 2020.

Region 2022212 Day 212 Average 2022-Ave. 2020212 2022-2020
 (0) Northern_Hemisphere 7124997 6849722 275275 5880746 1244251
 (1) Beaufort_Sea 884463 789512 94950 875454 9008
 (2) Chukchi_Sea 575245 525326 49919 533748 41498
 (3) East_Siberian_Sea 787982 740081 47901 329453 458529
 (4) Laptev_Sea 297339 365902 -68563 61979 235360
 (5) Kara_Sea 104430 161090 -56660 95539 8891
 (6) Barents_Sea 0 31433 -31433 23940 -23940
 (7) Greenland_Sea 292278 291488 790 282403 9875
 (8) Baffin_Bay_Gulf_of_St._Lawrence 281955 130715 151240 35368 246587
 (9) Canadian_Archipelago 633235 540268 92967 515499 117735
 (10) Hudson_Bay 169704 135947 33757 92861 76844
 (11) Central_Arctic 3096938 3136284 -39347 3033706 63232

2022 is 275k km2 above average (4%). The main deficits are in Laptev and Kara seas, more than offset by 151k km2 surplus in Baffin Bay, along with additional ice in CAA, and an icy BCE (Beaufort, Chukchi, East Siberian seas).

Footnote on MASIE Data Sources:

MASIE reports are based on data primarily from NIC’s Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS). From the documentation, the multiple sources feeding IMS are:

Platform(s) AQUA, DMSP, DMSP 5D-3/F17, GOES-10, GOES-11, GOES-13, GOES-9, METEOSAT, MSG, MTSAT-1R, MTSAT-2, NOAA-14, NOAA-15, NOAA-16, NOAA-17, NOAA-18, NOAA-N, RADARSAT-2, SUOMI-NPP, TERRA

Sensor(s): AMSU-A, ATMS, AVHRR, GOES I-M IMAGER, MODIS, MTSAT 1R Imager, MTSAT 2 Imager, MVIRI, SAR, SEVIRI, SSM/I, SSMIS, VIIRS

Summary: IMS Daily Northern Hemisphere Snow and Ice Analysis

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration / National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NOAA/NESDIS) has an extensive history of monitoring snow and ice coverage.Accurate monitoring of global snow/ice cover is a key component in the study of climate and global change as well as daily weather forecasting.

The Polar and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite programs (POES/GOES) operated by NESDIS provide invaluable visible and infrared spectral data in support of these efforts. Clear-sky imagery from both the POES and the GOES sensors show snow/ice boundaries very well; however, the visible and infrared techniques may suffer from persistent cloud cover near the snowline, making observations difficult (Ramsay, 1995). The microwave products (DMSP and AMSR-E) are unobstructed by clouds and thus can be used as another observational platform in most regions. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery also provides all-weather, near daily capacities to discriminate sea and lake ice. With several other derived snow/ice products of varying accuracy, such as those from NCEP and the NWS NOHRSC, it is highly desirable for analysts to be able to interactively compare and contrast the products so that a more accurate composite map can be produced.

The Satellite Analysis Branch (SAB) of NESDIS first began generating Northern Hemisphere Weekly Snow and Ice Cover analysis charts derived from the visible satellite imagery in November, 1966. The spatial and temporal resolutions of the analysis (190 km and 7 days, respectively) remained unchanged for the product’s 33-year lifespan.

As a result of increasing customer needs and expectations, it was decided that an efficient, interactive workstation application should be constructed which would enable SAB to produce snow/ice analyses at a higher resolution and on a daily basis (~25 km / 1024 x 1024 grid and once per day) using a consolidated array of new as well as existing satellite and surface imagery products. The Daily Northern Hemisphere Snow and Ice Cover chart has been produced since February, 1997 by SAB meteorologists on the IMS.

Another large resolution improvement began in early 2004, when improved technology allowed the SAB to begin creation of a daily ~4 km (6144×6144) grid. At this time, both the ~4 km and ~24 km products are available from NSIDC with a slight delay. Near real-time gridded data is available in ASCII format by request.

In March 2008, the product was migrated from SAB to the National Ice Center (NIC) of NESDIS. The production system and methodology was preserved during the migration. Improved access to DMSP, SAR, and modeled data sources is expected as a short-term from the migration, with longer term plans of twice daily production, GRIB2 output format, a Southern Hemisphere analysis, and an expanded suite of integrated snow and ice variable on horizon. Source:  Interactive Multisensor Snow and Ice Mapping System (IMS)

Time to Cross Examine Climatists

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Kurt Schlichter explains at Town Hall Cross-Examining the Climate Change Cultists.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Well, I’m a lawyer. I question scientists for a living.

Now, I have no scientific training to speak of. I majored in communications and political science, so the only science I studied at UC San Diego had to do with the physics of foaming when I poured Coors into a glass, as well as the mechanics of human reproduction. Don’t expect me to discourse deeply on the heat retention coefficient of CO2 – I don’t even know if that is a thing, but it sure sounds sciency.

Instead, I hire scientists in most every case I try. Sometimes I hire several in different disciplines. The other side does too, and here’s the weird thing – at trial, the other side’s scientists always, always, disagree with my scientists.

A smart attorney wants a scientist who tells you what he really thinks and who has a solid, rational basis for his conclusions. You need to know if your case is strong or weak – if it is weak, you want to resolve it before trial.

But the fact is that two scientists with good credentials can look at the same set of facts and come to different conclusions. This happens all the time. So, how do you know which one is right?

Well, that’s where the lawyer magic comes in. See, our job is to punch some holes in what the other side’s scientists say. That’s what a lawyer does, and it is critical to the pursuit of truth. You have to test the testimony, because otherwise it is just a one-sided monologue. You know, like the cross-examination-free January 6th Kongressional Kangaroo Kommittee. Those amphibians made sure there was no cross-examination because they did not want their phony case questioned.

You want a lawyer who, besides making his own case,
takes the evidence from the other side and slices and dices it.

Cross-examination, it has been said, is the greatest engine for the discovery of the truth man has yet created. And when someone wants to prevent vigorous, even brutal cross-examination of his case, that’s a giveaway that it is weak.

And I’m looking at the climate change hoax. The weather cultists even have a uniquely dumb and offensive slur for people who dare test their evidence, such as it is: “Denier.”

The art of cross-examination is designed to illuminate the reasons not to believe the other side.

Expose the Bias

The actual order you do a cross in varies, but let’s start with attacking bias. Bias is huge. Bias is any interest in the testimony outside of simply offering the truth for the truth’ sake. If a person has an interest in a particular answer, then his testimony in support of that answer is questionable. Is he getting paid by someone with an interest in his answer? That can show bias. In the climate arena, is he getting climate change grants? Remember, it’s not just getting hired but the potential for getting fired that can show bias. “Assistant Professor Warmingnut, in fact, if you were opposed to the idea of human-caused global warming being an existential threat, you would have zero chance of ever getting tenure as a full professor at the University of College, correct?”

An awful lot of these science folk have a huge personal interest in providing a pro-climate hysteria answer, whether from gaining cash to saving their careers. And that matters. But for some reason we are not supposed to point that out because scientists are these neutral monks without human drives like greed, fear, and pride. Hang around some scientists for a while and see if you buy that.

Bore into the Supporting Foundation

Then you would test the foundation that supports their conclusion. You might point out that we have only a human temperature record going back a few hundred years. You could also point out the “heat sink” issue – urban areas tend to retain more warmth than rural areas, and measurements are often closer to urban areas than out in the boonies. They would talk about tree rings and ice cores and such, but you would point out that these are not direct evidence of the temperature like directly measuring it is – we think we can extrapolate from them how hot it was in 2000 BC, but it is really only an educated guess. And then you might question the various adjustments to the raw data that they make before presenting it.

 

Challenge the Conclusions Directly

You would also want to cross-examine the conclusions themselves. It’s pretty popular to claim that the recent heatwave in Europe proves global warming. But then, why doesn’t a cold wave disprove it? In fact, what set of facts would disprove the climate change theory? Isn’t the scientific method about generating a theory for a phenomenon and then testing it by trying to find facts that disprove it? So, what would disprove global warming?

None, of course. Everything always proves it. How sciency!

And while we are at it, since “global warming” has been replaced by “climate change,” what, precisely, is the climate we need to maintain? What is the “correct” temperature? Is the goal to stop all climate change? Do we need to counteract natural climate change? You do agree that climate does change naturally, right? All those Americans with those SUVs and BBQs were thousands of years from coming into being when the ice age happened, so what caused that? And what caused the subsequent global warming after it? Are those same phenomena absent today? If not, how much are they causing now?

There are lots of nits to pick. How about the constantly retreating goalposts? What is the current climate apocalypse deadline? Didn’t Al Gore tell us in the 2000s that we would be suffering a climate catastrophe right now in 2022? Florida is still above water, right? So, the scientists Al listened to were wrong, weren’t they? So, Dr. Warmingnut, you concede that scientists have been wrong about climate? The ones in the seventies projecting another ice age in a decade were wrong, correct? So why are the scientists today right?

Object to Adverse Implications

And then cover the implications. So, you are recommending a pretty radical program of ending the use of fossil fuels and getting rid of cows because they tend to act like Eric Swalwell in order to treat global warming? So, what, exactly, will be the effect of America doing that on the global part of the warming issue? Will it matter what America and Europe do if India and China maintain their current carbon footprints? And how much, in dollars and disruption, will your remedies cost? How does that compare to the cost of ameliorating some climate change effects like higher ocean levels and hotter temperatures?

And then you need to point out some macro issues with questions on the real agenda. So, Dr Warmingnut, can you name a single major climate change remedial initiative, such as higher taxes and increased bureaucratic authority, that does not correspond to something the political left wants to do anyway? Can you name one climate remedial initiative that supports a conservative objective? Does it strike you as odd that the people supporting climate change wanted all the things they now demand because of climate change long before climate change became a thing?

And does it seem strange to you that climate advocates like John Kerry are zipping across the Atlantic to party in Davos and folks like Barack Obama are buying beachfront property if this is an existential crisis?

I know, I know, shut up, denier!

I’m not a scientist. But I am a lawyer. My job is to dig out the truth through cross-examination. And it seems very telling that the climate change hoaxers are desperate to avoid any examination of their ridiculous assertions at all.

Footnote:  Jason Johnson wrote an extensive cross examination of global warming/climate change, pdf available here:   Global Warming Advocacy Science: A Cross Examination

Scientists who have been leaders in the process of producing these Assessment Reports (“AR’s”) argue that they provide a “balanced perspective” on the “state of the art” in climate science, with the IPCC acting as a rigorous and “objective assessor” of what is known and unknown in climate science. Legal scholars have accepted this characterization, trusting that the IPCC AR’s are the product of an “exhaustive review process” – involving hundreds of outside reviewers and thousands of comments. 

It is virtually impossible to find anywhere in the legal or the policy literature on global warming anything like a sustained discussion of the actual state of the scientific literature on ghg emissions and climate change. Instead, legal and policy scholars simply defer to a very general statement of the climate establishment’s opinion (except when it seems too conservative), generally failing even to mention work questioning the establishment climate story, unless to dismiss it with the ad hominem argument that such work is the product of untrustworthy, industry-funded “skeptics” and “deniers.”

This paper constitutes such a cross-examination. As anyone who has served as an expert witness in American litigation can attest, even though an opposing attorney may not have the expert’s scientific training, a well prepared and highly motivated trial attorney who has learned something about the technical literature can ask very tough questions, questions that force the expert to clarify the basis for his or her opinion, to explain her interpretation of the literature, and to account for any apparently conflicting literature that is not discussed in the expert report. My strategy in this paper is to adopt the approach that would be taken by a non-scientist attorney deposing global warming scientists serving as experts for the position that anthropogenic ghg emissions have caused recent global warming and must be halted if serious and seriously harmful future warming is to be prevented – what I have called above the established climate story.

See also Critical Climate Intelligence for Jurists (and others)

 

Trudeau Government Out Of Service

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The view from National Post is Trudeau fiddles, while the federal government crumbles around him.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The Trudeau Liberals are failing to deliver even the most basic government services

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visits children at the Okanagan Boys and Girls Club childcare centre in Lake Country, B.C., on July 18. PHOTO BY ARTUR GAJDA/REUTERS

The federal government is broken — but you wouldn’t know it from following the summer adventures of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

It’s no secret that the prime minister loves photo-ops, but he usually manages to at least tangentially connect them to some sort of issue. War in Ukraine? Time for a heavily photographed European tour. Outrage over residential schools? Someone find him a teddy bear and a well-lit place to kneel.

But his latest string of photo-ops don’t even bother with rhyme or reason as he tours the country seemingly at random, for no real purpose, doing basically nothing. One day he’s playing camp counsellor in the woods, the next he’s all smiles and no mask on a sightseeing train. Next thing you know, he’s picking cherries and chumming it up with fruit growers in British Columbia.

So far, no one’s been able to figure out quite why he’s doing this. He hasn’t used the trips to make any policy or funding announcements, wasn’t in town for fundraisers and the notion of a fall election seems absurd even by Liberal standards.

It’d be great if the media could ask him during one of his many photo-ops, but he’s forbidden journalists from posing questions. He wouldn’t want anything to distract from his carefully curated tableaus, and reporters have a pesky habit of wanting to talk about things other than children’s stories and fruit.

Meanwhile, across Canada, people are literally camping outside Service Canada locations in attempts to secure passports. Airports suffer from rampant flight delays and cancellations, lost luggage, long lines and staff shortages.

Pilots can’t get certified or re-certified because, according to Dario Matrundola, president of Canadian Flyers Aviation College, Transport Canada “completely dropped the ball.” In Quebec, hundreds of court cases are being postponed due to a shortage of judges.

Emergency rooms are closing due to staffing and capacity issues. Both hospitals in Saint John, N.B., hit capacity last weekend, forcing some residents to drive over an hour to receive emergency care. In Montreal, a children’s hospital was recently forced to turn away patients.

The immigration system is backlogged with over 2.7 million applications in the queue. We have stopped taking new applications to resettle the Afghans who helped our Forces and now face persecution from the Taliban.

Many Indigenous communities still don’t have potable drinking water. The federal government’s idea of solving what many believe is a housing crisis is to spend public money on building a paltry 260 new homes — a bad, government-centric response that helps almost no one.

The ArriveCAN app is glitching and ordering vaccinated travellers into quarantine. If you live in the downtown core of many Canadian cities, it’s impossible to miss the growing numbers of people sleeping, eating and even defecating on the streets.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Where is the Liberals’ new China policy that they’ve been promising since 2019? Or someone to fill the ambassador to China role that’s now been vacant for over six months? Is anyone even enforcing our Russian sanctions (when the federal government itself isn’t breaking them)?

It’s becoming harder to find areas of government that aren’t in crisis than ones that are. Chaos and dysfunction are seemingly everywhere. The Trudeau Liberals are failing to deliver on even the most basic government services.

Ironically, it’s the same politicians and political staffers responsible for these failures who can’t seem to fathom why voters are losing trust in Canadian institutions. They view frustration with government “gatekeepers” as unfounded and dangerous, rather than the predictable result of their negligence and general apathy toward average Canadians.

Canadians are frustrated that they cannot receive even basic government services in a timely manner, and that their vacation plans are being disrupted, after over two years of complying with coronavirus restrictions. But the Liberals can’t see that because they’re too busy patting themselves on the back for their supposed moral authority, and Trudeau doesn’t want to hear it while he tours the nation’s summer camps.

It’s often Conservatives who are accused of wanting to let government services erode, in order to usher in privatization. But under the Liberals, those services have all but collapsed.

If the left believes that big government is the solution to the problems that plague our nation, they couldn’t be doing more to undermine their own ideology. Rather than demand change, Liberal supporters seem determined to defend and deflect, sacrificing their party’s credibility to serve Trudeau’s cult of personality.

What Canada needs right now is for the prime minister to start demonstrating a real commitment to getting the federal government working again. That means focusing on real, tangible results, rather than taking an extended vacation. School children may be out for the summer, but as our head of government, Trudeau does not have that same luxury — especially when his government is in such a state of disarray.

 

Fake Climate Emergency on Horizon

Posted on by Ron Clutz

The editors of IBD explain at Issues and Insights Climate Emergency?  What a Crock.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Joe Biden did not declare a climate emergency last week, as many in his party urged him to do. One Democratic senator claimed that the changing climate required “bold, intense executive action” from the president. Another said Biden needed to move because “the climate crisis is a threat to national security.” But there’s no emergency. It’s a wholly manufactured charade.

Though he put off an executive action, Biden said last Wednesday that he has “a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger. And that’s what climate change is about. It is literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger. The health of our citizens and our communities is literally at stake.”

His non-COVID fever continued:

“Climate change is literally an existential threat to our nation and to the world. … Right now, 100 million Americans are under heat alert – 100 million Americans. Ninety communities across America set records for high temperatures just this year, including here in New England as we speak.”

On the same day Biden issued an authoritarian’s threat:

“Since Congress is not acting on the climate emergency, I will,” he tweeted. “And in the coming weeks my Administration will begin to announce executive actions to combat this emergency.”

Most Americans who aren’t named Barack Obama like to think that the U.S. is the center of our world if not the universe. But just because much of the country has been hot, it doesn’t mean the entire Earth is on fire. Yet our politicians and media focus on unusual heat despite the obvious:

If the global temperature “is just about average” – and it is –
“then clearly it must be well below average somewhere else.”

The facts, not the Democrats and activists’ political desperation, show that global temperatures have gone nowhere over the past four decades, which is the only period of time they can be accurately measured and compared. Anyone who believes that the temperature record before 1979 is reliable is fooling themselves (and also a blind ideologue).

The only data that can be trusted, that makes a genuine apples-to-apples comparison, are the measurements from satellites. All other temperature reconstructions require faith in subjective readings of often poorly placed primitive instruments, and compromised tree ring signals.

So, then what do the satellite data tell us? That we just went through “the coolest monthly anomaly in over 10 years, the coolest June in 22 years, and the ninth coolest June in the 44 year satellite record,” says University of Alabama at Huntsville climate scientist Roy Spencer. [See Tropics Lead Remarkable Cooling June 2022]  Repeat the line:

Last month was “the coolest monthly anomaly in over 10 years,
the coolest June in 22 years,
and the ninth coolest June in the 44 year satellite record.”
Yeah, that’s some emergency.

But then June 2022 is just one month of many. What about the rest of the record? While global temperature based on satellite readings has trended upward, the increase has been slight. “The linear warming trend since January 1979” is a mere 0.13 of a degree Celsius per decade, says Spencer. June 2022 was also cooler than a number of months on Spencer’s chart, quite a few of them going back more than 20 years.

Other evidence than the emergency exists only in the overly political minds of Democrats, their communications department (the mainstream media), and the usual zealots include:

♦  “Despite rhetoric to the contrary, there is still plenty of sea ice over Arctic regions this summer, supplying feeding platforms for polar bears, ice-dependent seals, and walrus cows nursing their young calves.” – Watts Up With That?

♦  “If you took a very careful look with consistent data over long periods of time, you will find that these (natural) disasters are not increasing. In fact, the health of the world is increasing tremendously. For example, deaths from weather disasters and so forth have gone down about 95% in the last hundred years. … They really aren’t increasing in frequency or intensity.” – John Christy, University of Alabama at Huntsville climatologist

♦ “The ice caps on Mars have been shrinking in sync with ice caps on earth. To me, that’s fairly good evidence that the sun is involved but NASA assures us that’s not so.” – Bookworm Room

♦ “Natural variability of the atmosphere was the proximate cause of the (recent) warmth and does not represent an existential threat to the population of Europe. Clearly, there’s no cause for alarm, no matter what the media says. But the media won’t tell you any of that, because it ruins their narrative of being able to blame the heatwave on climate change, while hoping you don’t notice their distortion of the truth about ordinary weather events we see every summer.” – Anthony Watts

It’s probably an even bet that Biden will eventually declare a climate emergency. His handlers probably think doing so would help pull his miserable ratings out of their tailspin. But we don’t think Americans want their presidents to act like dictators, especially when they are as feeble of mind as Biden is.

 

ESG Woke Social Credit System for Global Government

Posted on by Ron Clutz

From Think Civics ESG Is A Globalist ‘Scam’ Meant To Usher In ‘One World Government’.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

James Lindsay, author of “Race Marxism” and other books challenging woke narratives, has taken environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores into his crosshairs, calling ESG a weapon in the hands of “social justice warriors” to shake down corporations and a tool in the hands of those seeking to impose “one world government.”

Lindsay told NTD’s “The Nation Speaks” program in a recent interview that the ESG scoring system was initially conceived as a way for investors to track the likelihood that a corporation would be a good bet for investment over the long term.

“In the early 2000s, a few very socially minded socially activist investors got together and thought up this idea that, well, it’s probably the case that companies that are bad at environmental policy, bad with social responsibility, and bad corporate governance are going to be bad bets in long term investment,” he said.

Lindsay believes the ESG concept was suspect from the very beginning and it’s unclear whether higher scores translated into good long-term profitability for participating corporations.  Lack of transparency in how ESG scores are determined is an open door for abuse, Lindsay further contended.

Worse still, he argued that, over time, ESG scores have been hijacked
and “weaponized” by “social justice warriors.”

“They have the leverage to be able to use this like a … financial gun to the head of any corporation that doesn’t do what it wants them to do,” he said, calling it a “blatant weaponization.”

“In fact, it’s racketeering is what it is, is just criminal racketeering, using what looks like a responsible measurement tool as the mechanism. So nobody’s directly responsible for engaging in what is really a mob shakedown of corporations,” he argued.

Even more troubling is Lindsay’s argument that ESG fits into a “broader global agenda” that he said wants to make the West energy poor—to the benefit of countries like China—and as a way of social control.

“They want to implement the exact same control system because they see that it works to control people in China,” adding that, in his view, the “power elite” in the West “often do want to control people.”

“And so they would be using that as a tool to try to get toward one world government,” Lindsay said.

Insider Intelligence estimates that, in 2022, there was $41 trillion in ESG assets under management worldwide.   By 2025, this figure is expected to climb to $50 trillion.

Authored by Cindy Drukier and Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times

See Also Federal Climatists Target US Personal Pension Funds

…

 

WHO Spells It “Moneypox”

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Robert Malone writes at Brownstone Institute Delete the K in Monkeypox.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

In a move that is sure to trigger widespread discussion concerning the independence, objectivity and wisdom of granting authority to the WHO to manage global infectious diseases responses, the monkeypox outbreak has been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization.

The declaration was made unilaterally, in direct contradiction of independent review panel advice, by WHO director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Tedros made the declaration despite a lack of consensus among members of the WHO’s emergency committee on the monkeypox outbreak, and in so doing overruled his own review panel, who had voted 9 against, 6 for declaring the PHEIC. Tedros asserted that this committee of experts (who met on Thursday) was unable to reach a consensus, so it fell on him to decide whether to trigger the highest alert possible.

When the group met in June, the breakdown was 11 against and three for. It is not clear what has changed in the intervening four weeks to justify the change in Tedros’ position, although comments from internet pundits raise concerns that the unilateral action was taken in response to pressure from special interest advocacy groups.

There has also been a sudden burst of coordinated social media postings raising concerns regarding Monkeypox risks to children, which raises the question “If Monkeypox is a sexually transmitted disease, why are kids getting it?”

On Friday, the U.S. confirmed the first two cases of monkeypox in children, Centers for Disease Control Prevention and Control (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said Friday. The CDC has said children, especially those under 8 years old, are among those at “especially increased risk” for severe monkeypox disease.

At a virtual event with the Washington Post on Friday focused on new coronavirus variants, Walensky stated that:

“Both of those children are traced back to individuals who come from the men-who-have-sex-with-men community, the gay men’s community,”

The WHO defines a PHEIC as “an extraordinary event which is determined to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.”  

The WHO further explains how this definition implies a situation that is serious, sudden, unusual or unexpected; carries implications for public health beyond an affected country’s border and may require immediate international action.  Since the procedures to declare a PHEIC were implemented in 2005, the WHO has only done so six times. The last time was in early 2020, for Covid-19.

Tedros’ statements clearly demonstrate that he unilaterally substituted his own opinions for those of the convened panel, raising questions of his objectivity, commitment to process and protocol, and whether he has been unduly influenced by external agents.

As the outbreak continues to grow, epidemiologists are split as to whether the WHO’s decision was correct. The meeting was the second time the emergency committee convened, after a meeting on June 23 when it decided the outbreak had not met that threshold.

Dr. Jimmy Whitworth, a professor of international public health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine:

“It is a tricky decision for the committee, in some senses, it meets the definition — it is an unprecedented outbreak widespread in many countries and would benefit from increased international coordination.

On the other hand, it seems to be an infection for which we have the necessary tools for control; most cases are mild and the mortality rate is extremely low.”

The PHEIC designation comes from the International Health Regulations (IHR) created in 2005, and it represents an international “agreement” to help the prevent and respond to public health risks that have the potential to spread around the globe.

These are the same IHR which the Biden administration sought to further strengthen, but the attempt to implement proposed modifications were placed on hold after an international, multi-country outcry concerning loss of national autonomy. The unilateral actions of Tedros in this current situation clearly demonstrate that these concerns were warranted.

In an article supportive of the declaration, Vox news provided a summary of the potential financial beneficiaries of this declaration; that being vaccine manufacturers and the holding companies who have invested in them.

My Comment on Monkeypox Hygiene Guidelines

The usual suspects are stirring the panic pot over Monkeypox, and so far our trusted sources of health guidance, like CDC and FDA and NIH, have been silent.  So in the public interest I put forward a two-step program by which every individual can self-protect against Monkeypox.

1.  Do not handle monkeys, squirrels or other rodents,
2.  Do not have sex with anyone who does, or who has open skin sores.

There you go.  Refrain from these two activities and no vaccine required.

More from Dr. Malone, who actually is trustworthy:

Don’t be Worried By Monkeypox (Unless it’s Genetically Altered!)

Trudeau Wants Canada to Imitate the Dutch and Sri Lanka

Posted on by Ron Clutz

From The Counter Signal, in italics with my bolds

As per a Government of Saskatchewan news release, both the Alberta and Saskatchewan’s Ministers of Agriculture have expressed “profound disappointment” in Trudeau’s decision to attempt to reduce nitrogen emissions from fertilizer.

“We’re really concerned with this arbitrary goal,” Saskatchewan Minister of Agriculture David Marit said. “The Trudeau government has apparently moved on from their attack on the oil and gas industry and set their sights on Saskatchewan farmers.”

According to Alberta Agriculture Minister Nate Horner, “This has been the most expensive crop anyone has put in, following a very difficult year on the prairies. The world is looking for Canada to increase production and be a solution to global food shortages. The Federal government needs to display that they understand this. They owe it to our producers.”

“Fertilizers play a major role in the agriculture sector’s success and have contributed to record harvests in the last decade. They have helped drive increases in Canadian crop yields, grain sales, and exports,” a news release from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reads.

And indeed, according to a report from Fertilizer Canada:

    • Total Emission Reduction puts a cap on the total emissions allowable from fertilizer at 30% below 2020 levels. As the yield of Canadian crops is directly linked to proper fertilizer application this creates a ceiling on Canadian agricultural productivity well below 2020 levels….
    • It is estimated that a 30% absolute emission reduction for a farmer with 1000 acres of canola and 1000 acres of wheat, stands to have their profit reduced by approximately $38,000 – $40,500/ annually.
    • In 2020, Western Canadian farmers planted approximately 20.8 million acres of canola. Using these values, cumulatively farm revenues from canola could be reduced by $396M – $441M on an annual basis. Wheat famers could experience a reduction of $400M.

Moreover, Fertilizer Canada doesn’t believe that forcibly decreasing fertilizer use will even lower greenhouse gases but could lead to carbon leakage elsewhere.

Why WEF Elites are Attacking Agriculture

Cameron Smith explains in his ACHS article ‘Regenerative’ Farming: AOC’s Overhyped Climate Change Solution excerpts in italics with my bolds.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently came out in support of “regenerative” farming as a solution to climate change. There is little evidence to justify her advocacy.

The reality is that regenerative agriculture, as commonly defined today, can’t “protect” the global food supply from climate change; it can’t even feed a small country. To achieve the kinds of sustainability gains Ocasio-Cortez described, we need technology-driven farming that utilizes every available tool.

What is regenerative farming?

It’s actually difficult to pin down a clear definition. Most growers and agricultural scientists are interested in sustainable, efficient farming practices that allow us to feed more people while preserving our natural resources. But that’s not what advocates of regenerative farming typically mean when they use the term; their definition is often couched in ideological assumptions.

NRDC went on to explain that “Regenerative farmers and ranchers make every effort to reduce their reliance on synthetic inputs, such as herbicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers.” The problem with using this sort of technophobia as a guiding principle is that it excludes workable solutions to the problems everybody wants to mitigate.

Genetically engineered (GE) crops that require less water or naturally fight off pests are two very practical, innovative tools that “regenerative” advocates almost universally disdain. There is no justification for this bias since the genetics of a plant have little to do with how you grow it. A few agroecology advocates have made the same observation; they see no problem in growing GE crops according to agroecological principles.

The same goes for low-toxic pesticides. Widespread use of the weed killer glyphosate, the boogeyman in modern environmentalism, allowed many farmers to reduce or eliminate tillage as a form of weed control, significantly cutting their CO2 emissions. Herbicide-tolerant seeds introduced in the 1990s accelerated the adoption of no- and low-till agriculture.

In 2018 alone, farmers who cultivated these GE crops reduced their carbon emissions by 23 billion kilotons, the equivalent of pulling 15.3 million cars off the road. NRDC acknowledged the value of no-till farming, calling it “a technique that leaves the soil intact when planting rather than disturbing the soil through plowing.” But the group has also lambasted glyphosate as “a toxic weed killer.”

This isn’t to say that agrochemicals have no negative impact on the environment, because they certainly do. But that externality has to be balanced against the enormous production increases pesticides and fertilizers enable, which reduce the amount of land we dedicate to farming while feeding more people.

In any case, the solution isn’t to ban technologies that have proven their efficacy in spades. We instead have to devise new solutions that build upon earlier innovations. The end result is an increasingly sustainable food system. This is the key concept Ocasio-Cortez and other ideologues miss when they wax poetic about “regenerative farming techniques.” Let’s give Nordhaus and Saloni the last word:

… [t]here is no shortage of problems associated with chemical-intensive and large-scale agriculture. But the solutions to these problems—be they innovations that allow farmers to deliver fertilizer more precisely to plants when they need it, bioengineered microbial soil treatments that fix nitrogen in the soil and reduce the need for both fertilizer and soil disruption, or genetically modified crops that require fewer pesticides and herbicides—will be technological, giving farmers new tools instead of removing old ones that have been proven critical to their livelihoods.

Footnote When Will Justin Trudeau Stop Acting Like Dumb and Dumber?

 

Beware the Benevolence Bandwagon

Posted on by Ron Clutz

In his American Greatness article Roger Kimball warns of Big Government Benevolence.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

The union of abstract benevolence, which takes mankind as a whole for its object, with unbridled moralism is a toxic, misery-producing brew.

Consider, for example, the actor Jim Carrey, who back in 2018 told Bill Maher that “we have to say yes to socialism—to the word and everything. We have to stop apologizing.”  What a card! Were socialism to be instituted in the United States, one of the first things that would happen is that people like Jim Carrey—estimated net worth, $180 million—would be instantly pauperized. For what are the two fundamental pillars of socialism? 1) The abolition of private property and 2) the equalization of wealth. And the cherry on top of this fudge sundae is that Jim Carrey actually starred in a movie called “Dumb and Dumber,” which is about “two unintelligent but well-meaning friends from Providence, Rhode Island.” Talk about art imitating life.

Let’s leave the latest incarnation of really-existing-socialism—the country of Venezuela—to one side. That is a laboratory demonstration of what happens when you take a prosperous country and rigorously impose socialist policies on it. The former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was partly right when he said that the Venezuela of Hugo Chavez showed that there was “another way” of doing politics and “it’s called socialism.”

Corbyn forgot to add: that way leads to universal immiseration and societal collapse, which is exactly what is happening in the once-rich country of Venezuela now.

Jim Carrey—like “It” Girl Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—likes to talk about the wonders of socialism whenever there are cameras nearby. It is practically a Pavlovian response: bring media into proximity with educationally challenged scions of capitalist success and, glossolalia-like, out pop nostrums in praise of socialism.

It is easy to make fun of such prognostications. But it is important to understand 1) the emotional motor that continues to drive them—hence Carrey, Ocasio-Cortez, Jeremy Corbyn, et al.—and 2) the disastrous reality that is the inevitable obverse of that smiling emotional impulse.

So, what is the emotional motor of socialism? In a word, benevolence.

That may seem counterintuitive. Isn’t benevolence a good thing?

That depends. Benevolence is a curious mental or characterological attribute. It is, as the philosopher David Stove observed, less a virtue than an emotion. To be benevolent means—what? To be disposed to relieve the misery and increase the happiness of others. Whether your benevolent attitude or action actually has that effect is beside the point. Yes, “benevolence, by the very meaning of the word,” Stove writes, “is a desire for the happiness, rather than the misery, of its object.” But here’s the rub:

the fact simply is that its actual effect is often the opposite of the intended one. The adult who had been hopelessly ‘spoilt’ in childhood is the commonest kind of example; that is, someone who is unhappy in adult life because his parents were too successful, when he was a child, in protecting him from every source of unhappiness.

It’s not that benevolence is a bad thing per se. It’s just that, like charity, it works best the more local are its aims. Enlarged, it becomes like that “telescopic philanthropy” Dickens attributes to Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House. Her philanthropy is more ardent the more abstract and distant its objects. When it comes to her own family, she is hopeless.

The sad truth is that theoretical benevolence is compatible
with any amount of practical indifference or even cruelty.

You feel kindly towards others. That is what matters: your feelings. The effects of your benevolent feelings in the real world are secondary, or rather totally irrelevant. Rousseau was a philosopher of benevolence. So was Karl Marx. Yet everywhere that Marx’s ideas have been put into practice, the result has been universal immiseration. But his intention was the benevolent one of forging a more equitable society by abolishing private property and, to adopt a famous phrase from Barack Obama, by spreading the wealth around.

An absolute commitment to benevolence, like the road that is paved with good intentions, typically leads to an unprofitable destination.

Just so with the modern welfare state. It doesn’t matter that the welfare state actually creates more of the poverty and dependence it was instituted to abolish. The intentions behind it are benevolent. Which is one of the reasons it is so seductive. It flatters the vanity of those who espouse it even as it nourishes the egalitarian ambitions that have always been at the center of Enlightened thought. This is why Stove describes benevolence as “the heroin of the Enlightened.” It is intoxicating, addictive, expensive, and ultimately ruinous.

The intoxicating effects of benevolence help to explain the growing appeal of politically correct attitudes about everything from “the environment” to the fate of the Third World. Why does the consistent failure of statist policies not disabuse their advocates of the statist agenda? One reason is that statist policies have the sanction of benevolence. They are “against poverty,” “against war,” “against oppression,” “for the environment.” And why shouldn’t they be? Where else are the pleasures of smug self-righteousness to be had at so little cost?

The intoxicating effects of benevolence—what Rousseau called the “indescribably sweet” feeling of virtue—also help to explain why unanchored benevolence is inherently expansionist. The party of benevolence is always the party of big government.

The imperatives of benevolence are intrinsically opposed to
the pragmatism that underlies the allegiance to limited government.

The union of abstract benevolence, which takes mankind as a whole for its object, with unbridled moralism is a toxic, misery-producing brew.  This “lethal combination” is by no means peculiar to Communists. It provides the emotional fuel for utopians from Robespierre to the politically correct bureaucrats who preside over more and more of life in Western societies today, not to mention chattering celebrities like Jim Carrey who think it is chic to praise a philosophy that, were it instantiated, would entail his impoverishment and probably his incarceration.

Perhaps these folks mean well. Or perhaps they are just unstoppable narcissists and intolerant ideologues. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they really do seek to boost all mankind up to their own plane of enlightenment. Maybe inequality really does outrage their sense of justice.

Such attitudes are all but ubiquitous in modern democratic societies. Although of relatively recent vintage, they have spread rapidly. The triumph of this aspect of Enlightened thinking, as David Stove notes, marked the moment when “the softening of human life became the great, almost the only, moral desideratum.”

The modern welfare state is one result of the triumph of abstract benevolence. Its chief effects are to institutionalize dependence on the state while also assuring the steady growth of the bureaucracy charged with managing government largess. Both help to explain why the welfare state has proved so difficult to dismantle.

Is there an alternative? Stove quotes Thomas Malthus’ observation, from his famous Essay on the Principle of Population, that “we are indebted for all the noblest exertions of human genius, for everything that distinguishes the civilised from the savage state,” to “the laws of property and marriage, and to the apparently narrow principle of self-interest which prompts each individual to exert himself in bettering his condition.” The apparently narrow principle of self-interest, mind.

Contrast that robust, realistic observation with Robert Owen’s blather about replacing the “individual selfish system” with a “united social” system that, he promised, would bring forth a “new man.”

Stove observes that Malthus’ arguments for the genuinely beneficent effects of “the apparently narrow principle of self-interest” “cannot be too often repeated.” Indeed. Even so, a look around at the childish pretended enthusiasm for socialism makes me think that, for all his emphasis, David Stove understated the case. Jim Carrey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and a college student near you) would profit by having a closer acquaintance with the clear-eyed thinking of Thomas Malthus.

Footnote: Don’t Forget Brazil

 

 

 

US Feds Directing Big Tech Censorship? Discovery Begins.

Posted on by Ron Clutz

Adam Mill explains in his American Greatness article Is the Government Directing Big Tech Censorship? Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Details in a case filed in a federal district court suggest government-directed censorship on social media and the most comprehensive interference in a domestic election in the history of the nation.

We’ve heard it a thousand times: “The First Amendment doesn’t apply to private social media platforms.” That statement, however, presumes the private company’s independence from government action. But what if the social media platform defers censorship decisions to the government itself? Can the government circumvent free speech protections by using a cut-out to censor citizen speech critical of its policies or preferred political candidates?

An explosive case filed in the Federal District Court of the Western District of Louisiana may shine a light on the federal government’s role in Big Tech censorship.

On July 12, U.S. District Judge Terry A. Doughty (appointed by President Trump in 2017) granted permission for plaintiffs to conduct discovery into whether federal agencies violated the First Amendment rights of Americans by allegedly directing social media platforms to censor disfavored viewpoints and content. These topics include, “Speech about the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origin, speech about the efficiency of masks and COVID-19 lockdowns, and speech about election integrity and security of voting by mail.” More importantly, these agencies stand accused of working with social media companies to suppress, “The Hunter Biden laptop story prior to the 2020 Presidential election.”

If true, the government-directed censorship constitutes the most comprehensive interference in a domestic election in the history of the nation.

According to plaintiffs, the alleged government-sponsored tech censorship is ongoing. Plaintiffs filed a “Motion for Preliminary Injunction,” requesting an order prohibiting government defendants from, “taking steps to . . . encourage, pressure . . . any social-media company or platform to censor, suppress,” etc., “. . . any speaker, content, or viewpoint expressed on social media.” The attorneys general for the states of Missouri and Louisiana brought the lawsuit against various federal agencies on behalf of residents of each of these states.

The government opposed the lawsuit arguing that the states lacked standing to challenge government efforts to suppress speech on social media platforms. The court denied this challenge noting the states have standing because the laws and constitution of each state guarantee their residents free speech. The court noted that the lawsuit alleged injuries which, “are ‘imminent’ and allegedly ‘on-going,’ due to allegations of social media suspensions, removals of disfavored viewpoints, and censorship.” Federal agency suppression of citizen free speech, if proven, violates the laws and constitutions of those states.

The plaintiffs seek to force the federal government to reveal “the identities of federal officials who have or are communicating with social-media platforms about disinformation, misinformation . . . or any form of censorship or suppression of online speech,” in addition to “the nature and content of such federal officials’ communication with such social media platforms.” The plaintiffs have also asked for permission to “serve third-party subpoenas,” on selected social media platforms seeking, “similar information about the identity of federal officials who communicate with them, and the nature and content of these communications.”

Anticipating bad-faith objections and legal gymnastics to obstruct discovery, the plaintiffs further requested the court to rule on all objections. The court found, “the requests are reasonable,” and that, “Missouri and Louisiana have shown good cause for expedited,” discovery to aid in the resolution of the requested preliminary injunction. The court granted permission to the plaintiffs to serve the federal agencies with written discovery and third party subpoenas on “up to five major social-media platforms,” regarding the alleged coordination between the government and the platforms to censor and suppress speech. The judge then granted a mere 30 days for the federal agencies to respond.

What’s more, the court informed the federal agencies that it would promptly rule on any attempts to thwart the requests. The court even established a schedule for ruling on the preliminary injunction.

In October 2020, immediately after the release of the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the Daily Mail reported Facebook told Congress that it censored the information after the FBI told the platform that the information came from a “hack and leak” Russian disinformation campaign. The New York Post, which exclusively reported on much of the information, fiercely contested this claim—providing a detailed account of how a computer repair store owner legally obtained the laptop. Indeed, the Daily Mail published copies of a receipt bearing Hunter Biden’s signature which appeared to confirm the Post’s account of the origins of the story.

While the public has known about a letter signed by more than 50 former intelligence officials characterizing the laptop story as Russian disinformation, this is something different. A confirmation that current government officials helped censor the story would represent a significant development in the saga. As noted by the Epoch Times, the media coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story likely impacted the election outcome. If, as the plaintiffs allege, the social media companies acted at the direction of federal agencies falsely disputing the authenticity of the laptop, such a scandal would raise serious questions about the fairness of the 2020 election.

Footnote on Free And Fair Elections

Those who monitor elections internationally evaluate whether the process was both “Free” and “Fair.”  A free election is one in which all voters have unfettered access to all messaging by all candidates.  Violations include silencing opposition by putting them in prison or by destroying their media.  A fair election is one in which each eligible voter has one and only one vote counted.  Pieces of paper with marks on them are not ballots until it is determined that those marks were made by a lawful voter in the time and manner prescribed by the legislature. Only after that bar is crossed for every ballot is it possible to have an election.